


the fire that consumes

by Anonymous



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: AU, Demonic Possession, Getting Together, Ghosts, Halloween, Haunted House, Hauntings, Injury, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 05:41:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8433898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Nate drags his friends househunting, but some of this house's residents aren't ready to move on.In which it wouldn't kill Nate and Tyson to talk about their feelings... but avoiding it might do the trick.





	

“This is the last house on the list,” Nate promises, pulling past an ancient decorative gate into a long gravel driveway. The area is completely secluded, lots of trees, no close neighbours. 

In the passenger seat, Tyson shoots him a skeptical look. “Are you planning to become a serial killer?” Then he frowns, looking around. “Where’s the agent?”

Nate puts the truck in park. He brought Tyson along hoping to fix how awkward things have been between them the past few weeks, but so far he’s hated every house Nate’s showed him. “Shut up, come on. Not all of us grew up in overcrowded provinces.” He looks in the backseat for his other two best friends. Steve is just blinking his eyes open—he always falls asleep in the car—so Nate says, “Back me up, here, Jo.”

Jo looks from Nate to the house and back, but something about his dark gaze says he’s far away. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait until you get promoted to buy a place?”

Nate huffs and swivels back to look at the house. Sure, it’s nothing special: one and a half storeys, a garage, probably built in the seventies. It’s not a sprawling mansion or anything. Hell, it’s barely the same size as Steve’s cottage. But it’s just Nate who’s going to be living there. Maybe a dog or three. He doesn’t want something bigger; his mom doesn’t visit that often and he’ll have to clean it. “What’s wrong with this house?”

In the rearview mirror, he catches sight of Jo. The faraway look in his eyes now matches the pallor to his skin. “Where’s your agent?” he echoes, and Nate squirms to get his phone out of his pocket so he can check his messages.

No signal, but he does have a text from a number that looks vaguely familiar.

_lockbox code 7734._

Nate opens his door. “She’s going to be late, but she gave me the key. Come on, I want to check it out before it gets too dark to see the backyard.”

Steve and Tyson follow right away. Nate’s all the way to the front porch when he realizes Jo’s still in the truck. He looks to Steve. “Is he okay?” Steve would know, right? He’s Jo’s boyfriend, and he’s been sitting in the backseat with him while Nate drove the four of them all over the city.

Of course, he was also asleep for a good portion of that.

“Probably hungry,” Steve says with a quick glance at his watch, and yeah, that makes sense. Nate’s getting hungry too; it’s been a few hours since they stopped for sandwiches. Jo’s blood sugar is a little more sensitive than most. He gets cranky if nobody feeds him. “I’ll get him.”

Tyson puts his hand on Nate’s shoulder, and Nate turns back to the task at hand. He glances up. The sun’s just disappearing behind the trees behind the house.

“Maybe we should wait for another day?” Tyson suggests, gaze darting from the molding around the front door to the ornate front windows.

But Nate shakes his head. “End-of-quarter crunch starts Monday.” If he puts this off, who knows when he’ll have another chance to go househunting? He locates the lockbox hanging from the handle of the front door and enters the code.

Steve and Jo join them on the porch as the lockbox pops open. Nate catches the key neatly before it can fall and slots it into the lock. Even though the lock looks kind of old, the key goes in easily and turns almost by itself. Practically before Nate reaches for the handle, the door swings open, silent. The balance must be off, he thinks. He’ll have to fix that.

“Shouldn’t we wait?” Jo asks, shifting from foot to foot. “For your agent, I mean?”

“I have to piss,” Steve says.

“So find a tree! It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Nate rolls his eyes. What is Jo’s problem? “I’m going in,” he announces. “You can stay on the porch if you want.”

“I’m not staying out here by myself!” 

Nate pauses with one foot over the threshold, perplexed. Jo can’t be afraid, can he? It’s not like he’s a stranger to the great outdoors. He and Steve are always trying to cajole Nate into camping with them, which makes no damn sense when Steve has a perfectly good cottage. He opens his mouth to ask, but before he can, Jo pushes past him. 

“Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

Weird. Nate exchanges confused glances with Steve, then shrugs and follows Jo into the house.

For a moment when Nate steps inside, the house actually takes his breath away. It must take the others the same way, because it’s a good ten seconds before Steve gives voice to what they’re all thinking. 

“Nate, buddy… this is the ugliest house I’ve ever seen.”

It’s true. The foyer is an ungodly hodgepodge of ornately scrolled trimwork, floral wallpaper, parquet flooring, and a brass chandelier. The colors aren’t close enough to match or distinct enough to contrast properly, and the effect makes Nate’s eyes hurt.

Also, it smells weirdly like bacon.

Tyson cracks up, grinning at Nate. “Dude, you have the  _worst taste_. Why did you even want to see this place? There’s, like, thousands of dollars in renovations here just to make it not look like the witch’s cottage from _Hansel and Gretel_.”

“Shut up,” Nate grumbles, the back of his neck going hot. He could swear he looked at interior photos for all the houses they’ve seen today, but he doesn’t remember this. “Let’s find the bathroom, at least.”

Jo frowns and looks next to the door, rubbing absently at his sternum. “Do you think we should take off our shoes?”

Steve tsks. “Nah. No slippers. Besides, this is  _America_.” He says it in his best Colorado accent.

“It’s not like a little dirt could make it any uglier,” Tyson points out.

“Hey!” Nate feels like he should defend the honor of his potential home, but Tyson has a point. “All right, that’s accurate.”

”What do you think the bathroom looks like if this is the foyer?” Tyson muses.

Nate elbows him. “Give me a break. So I picked one ugly house.”

Tyson and Steve meet and then roll their eyes. Apparently his other selections haven’t been perfect either. Sue him. He’s an accountant, not an interior designer.

“Can we just look around and get out of here?” Jo says. “You were the one who didn’t want to wait. And Steve still has to pee.”

“I wouldn’t take my dick out in here,” Tyson mutters.

“As if you’re that picky.” Nate slaps him lightly on the back of the head—or tries, but Tyson ducks, flushing. Nate’s stomach twists, because—right. They don’t talk about that. “Let’s just find the bathroom, asshole.”

With the garage obviously to their left, they take a right. Nate shudders when he walks through a single strand of cobweb. You’d think people would keep their houses clean if they’re trying to sell. Maybe they’re not very motivated.

The foyer opens onto a living room that’s just a variation on the horror theme: the parquet floor has given way to straight hardwood boards in a rich red, with a pair of weird diagonal tile inlays in front of a fireplace framed in copper and brick. An easel with religious iconography sits propped proudly in the corner. The fabrics on the two handmade wooden chairs don’t match, and the wood clashes with the floor and again with the piano. 

But the worst part is the walls, which look like they belong in a slaughterhouse.

“Does anyone else feel lightheaded?” Jo rubs his eyes. 

Steve rubs his shoulders supportively. “Yeah, we’re all about to puke looking at this.”

“Is that  _blood_?” Tyson asks, staring at the symbols drawn above the fireplace.

“Of course it’s not blood.” But Nate doesn’t feel as confident of that as he sounds. Seriously, whoever decorated this place… Nate doesn’t want to meet them in a dark alley. “Maybe the owners are colorblind.”

“Maybe they’re serial killers,” Tyson grumbles. 

“Bathroom,” Steve reminds them, gesturing deeper into the house.

A chill goes down Nate’s spine as they move from the living room into the kitchen, and it has nothing to do with the raw wood of the décor or the wallpaper that evokes thoughts of raw meat. Crowded countertops, cupboards that seem crammed in to give as much storage space as possible—the four of them barely fit. Nate starts when he shifts to one side to make room for Tyson and accidentally brushes the doorway.

Tyson meets his eyes quickly before looking away, and Nate takes two more steps so he can exit the kitchen and have enough room to cross his arms.

He’s fine. He just—

_Crash!_

“Jesus!” Nate yelps, spinning around. Jo’s standing in the middle of the kitchen, doubled over in a coughing fit, like he scared himself so bad with whatever he knocked over that the air went down the wrong way.  His face is bloodless, maybe because the object he somehow pushed off the counter, still spinning in a lopsided circle on the floor, is an enormous chef’s knife. Apparently Nate’s not the only one who thought the kitchen was a little claustrophobic, if Jo’s knocking shit over. 

“Nothing’s broken,” Steve says soothingly. The knife stops spinning with the blade pointing toward the stove, and Jo bends to pick it up, still catching his breath.

“Where did that even come from?” 

Jo holds the knife up for inspection.

“Jo?”

He doesn’t answer Steve right away, still staring unblinking at the blade of the knife. Nate licks his lips and shifts his weight.

Steve touches Jo’s back and Jo starts and nearly drops the knife again. “This fucking house,” Jo mutters. “I can’t even breathe in here.” He leaves the knife on the counter.

They find the bathroom next. While tasteless and somewhat grungy—rust or poor hygiene has left something of a ring in the clawfoot tub—it doesn’t scream  _creepy murder house_. Steve even shuts the door behind himself. 

“Taking his life in his hands,” Tyson jokes.   
  
Nobody laughs.

Something drives Nate to keep walking, until he comes to a garish dining room that’s more lumberjack slaughterhouse than anything. It does, however, have a wide bay window looking out into the backyard, and Nate steps close to survey it. There’s no fence, just a lot of trees and a few weird outbuildings and the vague outline of hills in the background. The sun’s going down, making Nate squint, and then in a second it’s below the treetops and Nate finds himself blinking into darkness and—

He bites back a scream when a pale figure appears in the glass. But when he whirls around, it’s only Jo.

“We can’t get out.”

The hair on the back of Nate’s neck stands up. “What?”

“We can’t get Steve out of the bathroom,” Jo repeats. Nate wants to panic, but Jo is calm, collected. “The door is stuck.”

“I told you,” Tyson says, but unlike Jo, he looks nervous.

“You probably just need to give it a good shoulder.” Nate takes two steps away from the window, toward Jo. “Remember the pantry door at your old place? It always stuck when the weather got humid.”

Tyson follows. “Yeah, but it’s not humid today.”

Yeah, and the old place was in Tampa, where it can actually _get_ humid. Unlike Colorado.

Earlier Nate didn’t pay much attention, distracted by his desire to see the yard. Now he sees that the bathroom door is solid and hand-carved with a design that draws the eye to follow it, around and around, each curl more intricate than the last. He blinks when Tyson touches his shoulder to steady himself as he reaches past for the ornate brass doorknob.

It doesn’t budge, doesn’t even rattle, though Nate can see the tendons in Tyson’s forearm straining.

“What the hell?”

“Steve?” Nate asks. He raps on the door. “Are you okay?”

No one answers.

“The door isn’t that thick,” Jo says. He licks white lips. “I could hear him fine a minute ago.”

Nate gently nudges Tyson to the side so he can set his shoulder against the door. He’s broader than Tyson or Jo; if anyone’s going to get the door open, it’s him. “Steve?” he says again.

He thinks he hears something. A rasp, like something sliding across the floor. Maybe some heavy breathing. But nothing that indicates Steve heard him, or even that it’s Steve on the other side of the door.

“Hurry up,” Jo urges, his hands clenched into fists.

An inexplicable fear grips Nate, and his hand trembles as he reaches for the doorknob.

It’s silly. Nate knows that. What could have happened to Steve? He’s young; he’s healthy apart from his small bladder. This house and its terrible décor are making Nate irrational.

When he closes his hand on the knob, a searing pain shoots up his arm, and he pulls back with a hiss. His palm is scorched, blistering.

“Nate!” Tyson grabs his wrist, but before he can look closely, Nate snatches his hand away. It throbs as he holds it to his chest, too afraid to look.

What the fuck. What the  _fuck_. 

Adrenaline crashes through his veins, and his heart pounds. He has to open the door. He has to get Steve out of there, or—

The first time his shoulder hits the door, nothing happens. The second time, he hears wood splintering, but the door holds. By the third impact Nate’s hand and arm are screaming, but the doorframe gives with a crack, and the door swings open.

And then bounces back into Nate’s cheek, suddenly, and someone says, “Fuck!”

“Steve!” Jo rushes forward just as Steve raises his hand to catch the blood trickling from his nose. One vibrant drop escapes and spatters onto the floor. 

“…Ow,” Nate manages.   
  
Tyson pulls him away from the door and prods his cheek as though he’s checking for bone damage. Nate winces. “That’s gonna bruise.”

Nate holds very still while Tyson examines him, uncomfortably aware of Jo doing the same to Steve a few feet away.   
  
“Weirdest thing,” Steve says, only half to Jo. “I could hear you pacing outside the door, and then I couldn’t. Then the knob wouldn’t turn.” His lip is bloody too, and he winces and tongues at the cut. 

“Sorry for….” Nate gestures with his good hand. “I would’ve tried to tell you I was coming in.”

Steve waves him off. “It’s fine, I’m just glad you came to my rescue.” He rolls his eyes at his own joke, but he’s pallid. Or maybe the garish bathroom lighting is washing him out. “What happened to you?”

Tyson catches Nate’s hand again. Nate lets him this time, wincing at the contact. It burns, and the skin is red and raw, but it doesn’t look like a normal burn. It doesn’t look like any injury Nate’s ever seen. “Allergic reaction?” Nate guesses. The doorknob is some weird metal he thought was bronze, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe there was something on it? Because the doorknob couldn’t have really superheated. That doesn’t make sense.

“We should put something on this,” Tyson says, frowning. “So it doesn’t get infected before we can get you seen by a doctor.” 

“I’m not taking anything from this house,” Nate protests. Whatever he has in the truck’s first aid kit will do fine.

“Why not? You already broke the doorframe.”

Nate glances at the splintered wood. Tyson’s right, he already left his mark. Nate runs his fingers over it while Steve washes the blood off his hands. “Shit, I hope they don’t ask me to pay for that.”

“Where the hell is your agent, anyway?”

That’s a good question, but when Nate takes out his phone, he still doesn’t have a signal. “Must be a dead zone. Did you see a landline anywhere?”

Tyson scoffs, both at Nate and at Steve, who’s untucked his shirt to try to run water on a spot of blood. “Even if they have one, the phone is probably made out of human flesh or something.”

Nate wrinkles his nose. “Gross.”

“Which brings me to another question: Are you seriously considering buying this house?”

“What? No.” 

To his surprise, though, Tyson doesn’t look relieved, and he doesn’t crack another joke. His face goes pinched and grim, and his mouth is an unhappy line when he asks, “So why are we still here?”

The question hangs heavy in the air, twisting unpleasantly in Nate’s stomach. Because yeah, that’s definitely weird. Now that he thinks about it, he wants nothing more than to be shed of this place. But there’s Steve, calmly rinsing blood out of his clothes, and Nate was contemplating heading upstairs to check out the bedrooms.

His palm throbs in time with his shoulder and jaw.

Steve finally shuts the water off with a rattling of the pipes, and turns around. He still has a little spot of blood in the hair above his lip. 

He doesn’t say anything for a few long heartbeats.

Then he asks, “Where’s Jo?”

*

 

Tyson should have known better than to come along. But what says _no, I totally don’t care that you won’t move in with me_ like agreeing to look at houses?

Never mind that Tyson _does_ care and that they haven’t done their usual buddy-fucking thing in weeks. Which would have been fine if they’d progressed to having an actual relationship, like he wanted.

But oh no. Tyson came along despite his better judgment. And now Jo’s lost in this seventies Gothic horror novel atrocity.

 Slowly, he turns to look down the hallway. It’s empty, as is what he can see of the living room beyond it. He can’t hear anything that might be Jo, no footsteps, no breathing, no  _tap tap tap_  on a smartphone. Just the general low hum of any house with electric appliances.

Then—an uneven, hacking, desperate cough. Nate looks at Steve. “Has he been sick?”

Palpable relief washes over Steve’s face; the tightness around his eyes eases and his shoulders relax. “Must be coming down with something.”

But a quick search of the laundry room—blessedly boring, with peeling wallpaper and a paint-spattered washing tub and machines that look like they came straight from the 1970s—reveals nothing. No Jo. He isn’t anywhere on the first floor.

“Jo?” Steve calls. Tension creeps into his voice. Tyson can relate.

Nobody answers, and the coughing has stopped.

“He must’ve gone upstairs,” Tyson suggests.

“Or down.”

Oh fuck that. “He better not be downstairs, because I’m not going down there to get him.”

Steve only rolls his eyes and starts up the stairs. “Come on.”

Tyson doesn’t really want to go up, either, but he wants to be alone even less.

“Jo?” Nate asks as they reach the landing.

“Over here,” he says, and Tyson lets out a breath of relief.

They follow his voice and the light spilling into the hallway to the farthest bedroom, where Jo’s standing over the bed, looking lost in thought.

“Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” Steve tries to pull Jo into his arms, but Jo barely reacts, still riveted to whatever he’s found.

Never one to be left behind when Jo’s concerned, Nate follows closely. “What are you doing?” He frowns at the items on the garish bedcover, and Tyson’s forced to squeeze in too, curious despite himself. Steve steps back to make room.

A battered, dusty shoebox and its contents scatter across it and the floor. A closer look reveals photographs, all black and white, and yellow with age. Some of them are cracking, others faded into nothingness.

“I heard a noise,” Jo says, focused on his search. One photograph gives way to another, and another, people in period clothing with sunken eyes and sallow skin.

Nate shivers, so close to Tyson that Tyson feels it. “What are these?”

Jo drops the photo he’s holding and pulls another one across the bed. This one features a grim man in a suit and a woman obviously dressed as a nurse in front of a number of white tents. The topography in the background looks familiar. Tyson squints out the window, but it’s dark now, and raindrops have started to spatter the windows. The wind rustles the tree branches.

“It’s a hospital,” Jo murmurs, finding another photograph. Sure enough, this one shows an image of a metal gate that reads SANITARIUM at the top of the arch. “For TB patients.”

Nate takes the picture from him. “Wait a second. Didn’t we drive past something like this on the way in?”

Now that he mentions it, the wrought iron does look familiar, though Tyson is sure the legend at the top is gone now. “Didn’t people die of TB?”

“People still die of TB,” Jo says.

Which means.... “People died of TB _here_.”

Jesus Christ, it really is a haunted house.

They’re quiet for a moment as that sinks in. Tyson’s skin crawls. He takes a step back from the bed.

Jo coughs, louder and longer and deeper than before. It rattles in his chest, and he covers his mouth.

Tyson’s blood turns to ice. “Are you...?”

Jo pulls his hand away. There’s blood on his lip and on the tips of his fingers.

Jesus. Tyson meets Nate’s eyes. For the first time tonight, Nate looks worried. Finally. “We have to get out of here.”

“No shit,” Tyson snaps. Furthermore, Jo needs a Kleenex. Potentially to hold in front of his face while he coughs. Then, looking around: “Oh Christ. Where the fuck is Steve?”

Losing one of them once was fucking enough. 

“Here,” Steve says, appearing in the doorway behind them with a roll of toilet paper. Steve’s eyes are shadowed like he realizes they’re dealing with an outbreak of  _ghost tuberculosis_. And his boyfriend is infected. “Let me get that.” But not, apparently, like he’s afraid of being infected himself. Idiot.

“We’re leaving,” Tyson tells him. “Before anyone else gets sick or separated or locked in a bathroom or God knows what.” Beheaded, probably.

Jo laughs bitterly and spits bloody phlegm into a wad of toilet paper. “Can’t you feel it? This place is angry.”

No, Tyson didn’t feel it. Or he wasn’t letting himself believe he felt it. Not until now anyway.

He wants to make it into a joke—of course a house this ugly is angry—but his sense of humor deserts him. “You couldn’t have fucking mentioned that before we came inside?”

“Would you have listened?”

To Jo telling them the house was haunted? No fucking chance.

“Let’s just go. Before anything else happens.” Nate, the voice of reason.

“Thank you,” Tyson says, shoving Jo toward the bedroom door. “Now come on.”

The lights flicker as they go back down the stairs. Nobody’s running quite yet, but it feels like only a matter of time.

As it turns out, it wouldn’t have mattered.

“Did one of you lock the door?” They’re standing in the foyer, and Jo’s staring at the front door like it personally betrayed him.

Because it is locked. Tyson can see that clearly from three feet away.

“No,” Steve says.

“No,” Tyson agrees.

Nate shakes his head mutely.

It seems like an eternity passes before Jo moves forward to unlock the door. The lock doesn’t budge.

“That turned really easily on the way in,” Nate says. Thank you, Nate, for that totally unnecessary comment that is freaking Tyson the fuck out.

“Yeah, well, it’s stuck now,” Jo snaps, straining at the mechanism. Nothing happens.

God, they’re fucked. They’re so fucked.

“What about the garage?” Steve suggests. Tyson could kiss him, sort of, except then Jo would kill him and he’d be left behind to haunt this place with the rest of the creeps.

The door into the garage works fine. The garage door itself won’t budge, though, even with four of them trying to lift it.

Tyson’s mouth is dry when he says, “Back door?”

He already knows it’s hopeless. From the grim expression on Nate’s and Jo’s faces, they know it too. But they trudge back inside and Steve tries the door.

He turns around after only a few seconds, shaking his head wordlessly. The slider is jammed.

“Let me help,” Tyson says, fighting desperation. He squeezes between Steve and the door so they can both push. Sweat drips into his eyes and Steve puts his shoulder into it, but even with Tyson helping, it doesn’t move. 

They’re trapped.

Tyson swallows the terror clawing at his heart and steps away from the door, chest heaving. “What do we do?”

“We could break the window,” Nate suggests doubtfully.

“And then what?” Jo snaps. “We’re in a haunted house where the ghosts can lock doors and move objects. Let’s not give them any more ammunition.”

Tyson shudders, thinking about a thousand tiny knives piercing his skin until he bleeds out on this ugly floor. He wets his lips. “What about the hinges? If we could take the door off of them....” They might be able to wiggle the front door out despite the lock.

“Okay,” Nate agrees. “Okay, that’s good. I don’t suppose anyone has a screwdriver. Or, like, a Swiss army knife.”

They all look at Steve, who, of the four of them, is the most likely to have done well in Scouts. Tyson’s pretty sure he doesn’t know what end of a hammer to hold, but being prepared? Yeah, that’s Steve.

He grimaces. “I took it off my keychain when I went to Tampa last week. Didn’t want to lose it at Security again.”

Just then a flash of lightning streaks the sky. The lights flicker, humming and tick-tick-ticking as they try to stay lit, then go out. A second later thunder shakes the house.

What a cliché. Tyson can’t believe four white dudes are really going to die in a haunted house during a thunderstorm. It’s undignified. It should be laughable. But he can’t even crack a joke because his knees are watery and his arms are trembling and—

In the darkness, Nate takes his hand.

Tyson closes his eyes. That fucking asshole. If he’d—they’d never even be here in the first place if not for him and now—

Fuck it. If they’re going to die, Tyson doesn’t have anything left to lose. He squeezes back and finds his voice just as Nate takes out his phone to use as a flashlight. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but what about the basement? There wasn’t anything in the garage, but look at this place. Whoever lives here has to own some tools, right?”

In the eerie blue glow from Nate’s phone, Jo stares at Tyson with his lips slightly parted, his head cocked to one side like he’s listening for something Tyson can’t hear. Then he blinks. “Yeah. Yeah, that might work.”

“What about the basement door, though?” Nate says. “If it closes behind us….”

Tyson shivers. If he’s going to die, he at least wants to be aboveground.

“What if only one person goes downstairs?” Jo suggests. “The rest of us stay up here and keep the door open. Stand in the doorway if we have to.”

“Yes,” Tyson says immediately. That’s better. If three people stay here, that’s a 75 percent chance he won’t have to go down there.

“No.” Steve shakes his head. The light from Nate’s phone illuminates the hollows of his cheekbones but leaves his eyes in shadow. “Nobody goes alone. Two and two.”

Tyson grudgingly admits that makes more sense. He can’t imagine any of them wanting to go downstairs by themselves.

But: “I’ll go,” Nate volunteers grimly.

No. Fuck, no, let Steve and Jo go and Nate and Tyson can stay up here. Because Tyson doesn’t want to— _can’t_ —go down there. But he doesn’t want to be apart from Nate either. His hands shake.

Jo huffs out a breath, and it sounds like he’s firming his resolve. “Me too.”

As much as Tyson hates to admit it, it makes sense. About the only thing that could get him into that basement is knowing Nate’s in trouble. He imagines it’s the same for Steve.

“Okay,” Tyson says finally, nodding. “Okay, then let’s… come on.” The sooner they get started, the better their odds of escape.

Not wanting to be left in the dark, he takes out his own phone as Jo and Nate open the door. He has to let go of Nate’s hand, and he immediately feels cold. “Be safe,” he offers. His tongue feels thick and clumsy and his throat is dry, but maybe that’s just a reaction to the smoky air wafting up from the basement.

Nate gives him an anemic smile as Steve and Jo kiss good-bye. Then he and Jo disappear down the stairs.

Outside, the wind howls and rain spatters against the doors and windows, drumming on the roof. Thunder rumbles continuously, and the hair on the back of Tyson’s neck stands on end.

“It’ll be over soon,” Steve says, perhaps in an attempt to soothe him.

Tyson lets out a sharp, hysterical laugh. “Wow, ominous phrasing much? ‘Don’t worry, Tyson, soon we’ll all be d—’”

Steve hits him.

The first blow, a fist to the side of his head, stuns him, and he wobbles, bracing himself on the doorframe. His phone clatters down the stairs to shine at nothing.

Before Tyson can speak or raise his hands to defend himself, a second blow cracks across his body. It’s too hard and thin to be part of Steve—lightning flashes outside and Tyson sees the outline of the fire poker from the living room.

This is it, Tyson thinks. If Steve hits him with that again, he’s dead for sure. But maybe, maybe he can still warn Nate.

Before Steve can hit him again, Tyson releases the doorframe and lets his body tumble down the stairs.

                                                        *

 

“Do you smell that?” Nate asks as they reach the bottom of the stairs. His nose twitches. He can’t quite place the scent. “It’s like… almost bacon.”

Jo kicks at something on the floor. Nate shines the phone—an empty milk jug, covered in ash. The movement stirs up dust. “Believe me,” he says darkly, around a cough, “it’s not bacon.”

Obviously it’s not bacon. Nate knows that. But did Jo have to say it like _that_?

“Do you really think we’ll find something down here?” They move along one of the cinderblock walls, methodically searching. Just a screwdriver, or a chisel and a hammer, even. They could probably knock the hinges off a door with that. “Before something finds us?”

Jo picks up and discards a paint can. A good sign? “Something already did.”

“About that.” Nate might as well ask now, since his continued survival is not guaranteed. “So, like, you see dead people? And stuff?”

At the top of the stairs, something goes _thump_. And then another thump, and another, and a sickening thud like a melon being dropped on the floor. Nate whirls, his heart in his throat. He opens his mouth to call for Tyson—

But his phone finds the source of the bacon smell first.

Not five feet in front of Nate sits a man in an ash-covered armchair. Or he used to be a man. But his skin is discolored, gray with smoke. His mouth and eyes are open in a death grimace, but the eyes are shriveled and gray. Soot stains the skin around his mouth and nose. He’s still holding a sanding block in one hand, as though he were in the process of finishing some awful part of this awful house when he… when he….

“Died of smoke inhalation,” Jo says hoarsely. “Because tuberculosis. Of course.”

He coughs, the air rattling in his lungs.

Nate turns, braces himself on the wall, and convulses as the contents of his stomach try to come out through his mouth.

“ _Don’t throw up_ ,” Jo says sharply as Nate tastes bile. “Don’t—don’t _give them a way in_ —”

Nate swallows, shuddering, tears stinging his eyes as the stomach acid burns his throat. He doesn’t know how he understands what Jo means, that he means: don’t leave part of you behind. Don’t tell them who you are. But he does.

And then he looks up and angles the phone at Jo. “Oh shit. _Steve_.”

They scramble away from the corpse toward the stairs, tripping on things they can’t see because Nate can’t hold his phone steady.

By chance, the light illuminates a spray of red at the bottom of the steps. Nate’s stomach swoops and his fingers seem nerveless as he points the light higher up the stairs. More red, flooding down, dripping over the edge of the stairs from—

Jo bends and picks something up. “Another paint can,” he says. “It must’ve busted open falling down the steps.”

Right. But why? Why would it have fallen? “Tyson?” Nate calls. His palms are sweaty. He readjusts his grip on his phone. “Are you….”

The light hits a familiar shoe. Then a pair of jeans that’s spent some quality time on Nate’s floor. “Tyson!” He starts up the stairs, sliding in the paint. His foot goes out from under him and he smashes his knee on the edge of the stairs just as Jo picks his way past him.

Because Tyson’s leaning against the wall of the staircase, very still.

Nate scrambles up two more steps on his free hand and knees, until he can touch Tyson’s neck to feel for a pulse. _Please_. He’s shaking too hard to tell if Tyson’s heart is beating. “Tyson?” his voice cracks. “Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. Don’t….”

Something vibrates against his fingers. Nate realizes with a start that it’s a groan, that it’s a sound Tyson made. Tears of relief well in his eyes, but mindful of Jo’s warning, he doesn’t let them fall, just concentrates on breathing. Now that he’s calmer, he can see the shallow but steady rise and fall of Tyson’s chest.

Nate leans against the wall, panting, and looks up to check on Jo.

He’s there, and so is Steve. So that part is good.

The bad news is the door is closed, and the doorknob is—gone. After a second Nate spots it lying on the third step from the top beside a poker from the fireplace.

Steve is leaning against the door. In the garish light from Nate’s phone, he looks washed out. As though he’s fading. He’s as still as Tyson, and the renewed drip of blood from his nose only underscores the paleness of his skin.

“He’s alive,” Jo coughs breathlessly. “For now.”

Right. Who knows how long that will continue. They need to get out of here. Which means….

“Fuck me,” Tyson groans, his eyelashes fluttering. His brow creases. “Oh, hey, I’m not dead.” He winces. “I kind of wish I were dead.”

Nate forces himself to wipe his face on his sleeve. He hopes that will keep him from—from whatever happened to Steve. “Shut up,” he says wetly. “You’d better not fucking die. Can you walk?”

“I can probably hobble.”

Nate looks up at Jo again. He shakes his head, his expression drawn. “We’ll have to leave him for now,” he says of Steve. His voice cracks. “He’s….”

“Homicidal?” Tyson suggests. He grabs the railing and starts pulling himself to his feet. Nate gets himself upright too, wanting to steady him, especially with the state of the stairs. Tyson sags against his shoulder.

“Not himself,” Jo says.

 _Then who is he?_ Nate thinks, but he doesn’t want to ask. There’s no good answer. “Do you know how to fix it?”

Jo thins his lips. “Maybe.”

The three of them stagger carefully down the stairs. “How do you know this stuff, anyway?” Tyson asks when they get to the bottom.

“They talk to me.”

A shiver goes down Nate’s spine.

“Who does?” Tyson asks, just as the beam from Nate’s phone illuminates the house’s previous resident.

Apparently no longer concerned about conserving battery, Jo adds the beam from his own phone, pushing the shadows back farther, until they can make out a grim gray wall with a fireplace and a mantelpiece…

And a row of human skulls.

“Them.”

Tyson sways into Nate’s shoulder. “Okay. Great. Sorry I asked.”

Nate is too. Especially when the paper under the neatly laid logs in the fireplace starts to flicker. “Uh, Jo,” he says.

Jo looks over just as the kindling ignites. “Shit,” he says, dropping to his knees and setting his phone on the floor beside him. His breath rasps and catches as he fiddles with something on the inside of the fireplace. “The damper is jammed.”

One of the bigger logs starts to smolder. The room is already filling with smoke. “So you’re saying _we’re_ gonna be bacon soon.”

“I mean. If we can’t get out….”

Tyson inhales and coughs, and Nate meets his eyes. There’s so much he should have said. So much he should have done differently. It’s so obvious now, what Tyson really wanted. Nate should have known. “I should’ve said yes.” The words taste sour. “I thought, you don’t have a guest room and I couldn’t do friends with benefits if we slept in the same bed, not—”

Not with Tyson.

Tyson leans in, and Nate automatically ducks his head so their foreheads touch. “I was asking for more than friends with benefits, you idiot.”

“Oh my God,” Jo wheezes. “If we die because you assholes couldn’t talk about your feelings, I’m going to kill you.”

Tyson huffs, but Jo has a point. They aren’t dead yet. Nate breaks their gaze and sweeps the phone’s light across the far wall, the only space they haven’t yet examined. It’s mostly filled with firewood: thick logs stacked against the walls, smaller kindling in boxes. And—

“Oh fuck screwdrivers,” Nate says. He leaves Tyson propped against the wall for support and crosses the room.

The ax is heavy in his hands, long-handled, solid. He hopes it’s sharp.

“Okay, well, I’m super glad Steve didn’t find that,” Tyson says. “Can we go now?”

The wooden box of kindling next to the fireplace is smoking now, the wood darkening with alacrity.

“Yes, please,” Jo says. But before he takes a step closer to the stairs, he sweeps the skulls from the mantel and into the fireplace. Then—while Nate struggles not to gag—he tips over the armchair. The corpse lands only a few inches from the growing flames.

At the top of the stairs, Steve is starting to stir, coughing as he shifts on the step. Nate and Jo maneuver him out of the way and then Nate swings the ax at the door.

The way the night has gone so far, he expects to have to work at it. But maybe the wood is old and dry, maybe it’s rotten underneath the hideous paint job, because it only takes one swing at the knob and lock and one at the doorframe to splinter the door apart. Nate lets Tyson up first, then goes back to help Jo, who has Steve’s arm around his shoulder but is doubled over, coughing.

Nate slings Steve’s other arm over his shoulders and hopes he doesn’t wake up and try to kill them both. His back and legs strain with the effort of pulling him up the stairs as smoke billows around them. When he dares to glance behind him, flames are licking at the bottom of the staircase.

“Tell your boyfriend—” Nate’s foot, still covered in paint, slips, and he almost goes down, but he catches himself on the railing. “—fuck, tell him to lay off the gym.”

Jo is coughing too hard to answer.

They drag Steve to the front door, where Tyson waits with the ax, breathing hard and supporting himself against the wall. For the first time Nate notices the way he’s holding his right arm, the way he winces when it moves, the way he’s keeping his breathing shallow.

Behind them, there’s a _whoosh_ and a wash of heat, and Nate looks over his shoulders to see the top of the staircase engulfed in flames.

“Hurry up,” Jo urges, pawing at his eyes.

The smoke stings Nate’s too, and he blinks away tears as he hefts the ax.

One swing bites into the wood above the lock and sticks, and Nate has to struggle to pull it out again, his shoulders screaming. The second time the ax falls neatly into the hole left by the first one, tripling its size, but it doesn’t cut through the metal of the deadbolt.

Again and again Nate swings, hacking away at the door and the frame. The smoke is so thick now that he has to hide his face in his shirt to take a breath, and the heat feels like it might melt his clothes into his skin.

But he swings, and he swings, until the doorknob hits the ground and the door gives way.

“Go!” he shouts to Tyson.

Tyson shuffles past him, breath rattling so loud Nate can hear it over the roar of the flames.

Jo’s still crouched by Steve. He isn’t coughing anymore, but Nate isn’t sure that’s a good sign. He bends to get Steve’s arm around his neck again—

And Steve opens his eyes.

They don’t have time to determine if he’s going to try to kill them all. “Let’s go!” Nate says, and Jo struggles to his feet.

They make it to the edge of the porch before the windows blow out and the force sends them flying into the wet grass. Nate lands hard on his bruised face and shoulder, the wind knocked out of him. For a few long moments he thinks his neck might be broken.

“Nate!” Tyson skids to a stop near Nate’s head, and Nate gathers the strength to roll onto his back just as a siren starts wailing somewhere nearby. The rain on his skin has never felt so good. He raises his hand and grabs Tyson’s as Tyson pulls his head into his lap. Even that much movement exhausts him.

Beside them on the lawn, Jo is shaking Steve’s shoulder. Color seems to be returning to Jo’s face, and his cough is dry instead of rattling when he demands, “Steve? Steve! Wake up, wake—”

Steve sits bolt upright, then rolls onto his side and vomits something black that reeks of sulphur. It soaks slowly into the grass, as though the house is consuming it. Taking it back.

The four of them are still there, panting, recovering, when the cavalry shows up to take their statements.

Nate has no idea what he tells them, sitting in the back of an ambulance as a paramedic checks him for a concussion, but they must be satisfied. Despite the rain and the firetruck, though, it’s too late for the house. It burns to ash before their eyes.

“Gosh, that’s a shame,” Tyson says shakily as the final timbers collapse. Nate’s fingers have gone numb in his fierce grip, but he isn’t complaining.

Steve looks over. “Hey, Nate.”

“Yeah?”

“Fire your agent.”

Nate laughs a little in incredulity, glancing at Tyson, who’s beside him with other arm in a sling.

Tyson gives him an exhausted, hopeful smile.

Fire his agent. Yes. He should do that.

This time when he takes out his phone, he has full bars.

The message with the lockbox code is gone.


End file.
